How to Become a Felon Without Really Trying

I am a dealer and a deviant. This, I tell you, was not my intention. I wanted to write one of those cozy car-mag columns about my comically slow but charming old British car. It was to begin: "I once lost a drag race to a fully laden garbage truck . . ."

But no. I come to you instead as a dealer of contraband, a user of my own goods, a potential felon, and worst of all, a dupe.

Like many things in my life, it is all the fault of journalists. You see, when Csere reads a Detroit News story that begins, "Tired of sitting at endless red lights? . . . Now anyone can breeze through congested intersections just like the police, thanks to a $300 dashboard device," and continues, "It may be perfectly legal," even the Mad Hungarian's purse strings loosen.

The device in question is the MIRT (Mobile Infrared Transmitter), a 12-volt-powered strobe light that, when mounted via suction cups to the windshield, promises to change traffic signals from red to green from 1500 feet away. Traffic-signal preemption is not new. It was created more than 20 years ago for emergency personnel to hasten their progress to an incident. What is new is the availability of inexpensive, portable systems such as the MIRT, on the Internet. Also new was the raft of overheated newspaper articles that followed the late-October piece in the News.

For a mere $300 ($312.85 with shipping) I could game the system for my personal gain? It was too good to be true! Sign me up. Which is exactly what FAC of America—the company from which I ordered my MIRT online—did. The Minnesota-based firm, which also sells weed killer and firearms, made me an official dealer of MIRTs. FAC's Web site says the MIRT is intended only for authorized users and that I should contact my state's Department of Transportation to find out if I qualify. Turns out I don't. Still, I had no problem getting a MIRT. I never intended to become a dealer. The company just anointed me. You see, if I'm a dealer, it's my responsibility to see that MIRTs get into the right hands. It's not FAC's fault, then, that this MIRT was sold to a car-magazine writer intent on using it not for the public good. Are you detecting a faint fishlike odor yet?

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And if the company intends to sell these devices only to emergency agencies, why does the MIRT come with a dark-red infrared filter in front of the strobe so that "no visible light is emitted . . . you will blend in with all other traffic"? Do emergency personnel want to blend in with traffic?

Civilians, who might appreciate the stealth, should know before plopping down their money that the MIRT doesn't actually work very often. This is because its strobe will only work on computer-controlled traffic signals that are equipped with a preemption receiver. The underlying premise of the news coverage was the utter chaos that would be unleashed should the illicit use of MIRTs become widespread. It's the gentle deceit of exaggeration. There'd be collisions! Deaths! Considerable inconvenience! Yet, in Michigan, only one county has any concentration of preemption-equipped traffic lights. The county in question is Oakland, in the Detroit area, and it has only 85 such signals. That means of the 1500 lights in the county, less than six percent could theoretically be hijacked by the MIRT. And all 85 of them are concentrated on just seven streets in two cities. There are only five or so more preemption-equipped signals in the whole rest of the state. Not much potential for widespread chaos then.

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Because most preemptive signals are installed by state or local authorities, the U.S. Department of Transportation says it hasn't a clue how many there are in the nation. One transportation researcher who has studied preemptive signals guesses there could be as many as 50,000. Also, many of the newer receivers are encoded so only transmitters obtained through official means will work. The sound you hear is me slowly deflating.

None of these limitations—or the fact that no one had heard of a civilian ever being caught using one of these devices—prevented state and federal legislators from becoming publicly outraged. By the time I received my MIRT in early November, the Michigan DOT, caught off-guard by the news coverage, had dug up three dusty statutes of the Michigan Vehicle Code (all enacted in 1949) elastic enough to make civilian use of the MIRT a civil infraction. By the time I was actually ready to try out my MIRT in mid-November, two Michigan senators had introduced a bill that would make it a felony to sell, buy, or use one, punishable by up to two years in prison, a maximum fine of $10,000, or both. Dismissed early on was the idea to impale perps on large wooden stakes at the outskirts of town as a warning to others. The bill passed the Senate and has moved on to the House as I write this. Minnesota, Indiana, and the feds are considering similar bans.

Michigan's proposed Draconian penalties, says one of the senators' staffers, are justified because of the great danger presented by the MIRT. But given that a transmitter simply triggers a signal to begin a change, and that signal still goes through the same sequence of yellow, then red for the cross street before the tripped side turns green, how could it be so much more deadly than a signal operating normally? The stumped staffer promised to call back with an answer. I'm still waiting.

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Before my elected representatives could make a felon of me, I took a few long drives on four Oakland County roads with preemptive lights—my MIRT whirring, clicking, and smelling faintly of ozone. Once I turned a blinking yellow light to green. But that was of no benefit to me since I wouldn't have had to stop anyway. Another time, I managed to extend a green light in the direction I was traveling for as long as I pleased. Unfortunately, I was attempting to turn left and the left-turn-lane light remained red. The rest of the 100 or so test miles were, at best, inconclusive. Had I changed that light, or was it about to change anyway? Because none of these lights was equipped with any sort of notification device to indicate it had been tripped, most of the time there was no way to know if the MIRT was working at all. Several signals that appeared to have preemption receivers turned red on me and my MIRT.

So I went for broke and risked blowing my stealth: I removed the infrared filter, which FAC says will increase the MIRT's range. Here are the highlights from that experiment: On a nighttime run, I momentarily blinded myself as the harsh, white strobe reflected off my car's windshield. I badly stunned the driver of a Buick Century stopped at a red light in front of me. Paralyzed by the disco light reflecting in her mirror, she and her Buick remained motionless halfway through the green light. Later, a man in a Bronco II called me an asshole. Which is a more accurate description than my state legislature could come up with.